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THE 

HEALTH AND DISEASES 



OF 



WOMAN. 



BY 



/ 



IK,. T- TBALL, IMI- ID. 

Author of the " Hydropathic Encyclopedia ;" " Hygienic Hand Book ;" 

"Uterine Diseases and Displacements;" "The True Healing 

Art;" "True Temperance Platform; "Hygienic 

System ;" »« Tobacco Using ;" &c.,' &c. 




PUBLISHED AT 

THE OFFICE OF THE HEALTH REFORMER 

BATTLE CREEK, MICH. 

1873, 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

THE HEALTH REFORM INSTITUTE, BATTLE CREEK, lICH., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE 



_»« 



Ten years ago, an edition of 5000 copies of this work was 
published in New York, and rapidly sold, since which time 
it has been out of print. But it has been so often called for, 
and seems, moreover, to be one of the desiderata of the 
Hygienic literature of the day, that I have concluded to 
revise it, and have it republished. I have made some im- 
portant additions, and have corroborated the statements of 
the author by some pungent, and, I trust, instructive quo- 
tations from the latest medical authors on the subject of the 
diseases of women, and of the pernicious habits and fash- 
ionable follies which conduce to them. 

R. T. TRAIL, M. D. 

Florence Eights, K J,, Oct 25, 1872. 



TESTIMONIAL 



Having carefully examined the following pages treating 
upon the important subject of health and diseases of woman, 
we bear cheerful testimony to its merits, believing it sur- 
passes any work of the kind ever placed before the public. 
It points out in a clear, forcible manner the causes that are 
undermining the health of American women, and shows the 
terrible effects produced thereby upon their offspring. It 
portrays to young and old the sad consequences of following 
wrong habits of life, and the untold miseries resulting from 
drug medication as sustained by the highest acknowledged 
medical authority. We therefore unhesitatingly recommend 
it to every intelligent person in the land. No family should 
be without it, as it will prove an invaluable help in guiding 
the household in the paths of virtue and health. 

Mrs. M. A. Chamberlain, M. D, 
Miss P. M. Lam son, M. D. 
Physicians Health Institute, Battle Creek, Mich, 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 
WOMAN AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. . . 7 

OPIUM — ALCOHOL — TOBACCO — DRUGS. ... 9 

THE RACE IMPERILED 11 

RESPONSIBILITIES OF PARENTS. . . . .14 

AMERICAN MOTHERS 15 

WOMAN'S DISADVANTAGES. 16 

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION VS. WOMAN. ... 18 

ORIGIN OF MANY INFIRMITIES 20 

DRESS AND RESPIRATION 24 

DRESS AND THE SEXUAL FUNCTIONS 27 

SHOULD FASHIONABLE WOMEN MARRY 1 . , . 31 

DRUGGING AT PUBERTY. 32 

SCIENTIFIC DRUGGERY. 34 

SCANZONI VS. CHURCHILL. 36 

DR. PRESCOTT ON DRUGGERY. .... 39 

DRUGGING IN ACUTE DISEASES. . . . .40 

PROFESSOR GILMAN ON PUERPERAL FEVER. . . 41 

DRUGGING DURING PREGNANCY. . . . .43 

DRUGGING DURING THE LYING-IN PERIOD. . . 43 

CHRONIC DRUG DISEASE 44 

THE BETTER WAY. 50 

TOBACCO VS. WOMAN. ...... 54 

GLOSSARY 57 

(5) 



HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 



WOMAN AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 

THE declining health of American women, 
and the rapidly increasing frailty of Amer- 
ican girls, have now become prominent topics of 
the magazines and newspapers, as well as of the 
medical journals of the day. And the diseases of 
woman have long been recognized as the oppro- 
brium medicorum of the profession — the dis- 
grace of medical science. 

This cannot be because physicians have not 
had sufficient experience in their treatment ; for, 
in all ages, medical men have had much more to 
do with the diseases of women than of men ; 
and in this age, and in this country, more than 
three-fourths of all the practice of the profession 
are devoted to the treatment of diseases peculiar 
to women. 

At a festival lately held by a medical society 
in the city of New York, " dear woman " was 
toasted in the following words : " The last best 
gift of God to man, and the chief support of the 
doctors!' Do you imagine that when these 
jovial doctors were feasting themselves full and 

(7) 



C5 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

drinking themselves merry with the avails of this, 
delightful support, they were also devising ways 
and means to render her healthy, so that she 
would cease to be the " chief support of the 
doctors ?" 

There are in the United States seventy-five 
thousand physicians, whose aggregate incomes 
cannot be less than two hundred millions of 
dollars; three-fourths of this sum — one hundred 
and fifty millions — our physicians must thank 
frail woman for; can they not well afiord to 
compliment her in the ruby wine ? 

How can the doctors afford to have the women 
healthy ? Suppose the women of our country 
should become reasonably hygienic in their 
habits of living and in their ways of doctoring, 
what would be the inevitable result to the pro- 
fession ? Who cannot see at a glance that more 
than fifty thousand physicians would be at once 
thrown out of employment, and half as many 
drug shops closed for want of customers ? And 
then there would be the total loss of all the cap- 
ital and time they had invested in the business 
and in their education. And, moreover, three- 
quarters of all the medical schools in the country 
would be useless, involving a loss of a few 
millions more. 

But the chapter of calamities would not end 
here; if the women should become generally 
healthy themselves (for they would not do this 



OPIUM — ALCOHOL — TOBACCO — DRUGS. 9 

without being educated into a knowledge of the 
conditions of health), they would so arrange their 
households — their tables, their clothing, their 
sleeping apartments, and personal habits, that 
their brothers, husbands, and sons, would have 
much less occasion to patronize the profession, 
and so three-fourths of the remaining one-fourth 
of the medical profession would be liable to lose 
all they had invested in business, and subjected 
to the inconveniences of learning a new vocation. 
Can the medical profession afford to teach 
women to be healthy '? Shall they make this 
immense sacrifice for her sake, and for humanity's 
sake ? Is it not asking a little too much of poor 
human nature ? True, it would be a glorious 
thing for the world ; but the world would pay 
nothing for it — hardly a thank you — while it 
pays willingly and cheerfully its millions annu- 
ally to have the women dosed, drugged, poisoned, 
deceived, miseducated, maltreated, and ruined. 

OPIUM — ALCOHOL — TOBACCO — DRUGS. 

The British statesmen some years ago discov- 
ered that the opium trade, which they have 
forced on China at the point of the bayonet, was 
rapidly demoralizing and destroying the people 
of that nation. And it was suggested in their 
parliamentary discussions, that motives of justice, 
and equity, and humanity, and Christianity, de- 
manded its suppression. But what answered the 



10 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

government ? " True enough, it is all wrong and 
ruinous ; it is very bad for the Chinese, but we 
derive a revenue of twenty millions a year from 
it ; we have got accustomed to this income, and 
cannot very conveniently dispense with it. Be- 
sides, our merchants have invested much money 
in ships to carry on this commerce." So the 
opium trade went on. 

And the liquor trade, and the tobacco trade, in 
this country, are practiced on precisely the same 
principles. The moral sense of all mankind, the 
intelligent judgment of all the earth, the experi- 
ence of all the ages, the teachings of science, and 
the declarations of the Bible, declare those traffics 
to be abominable and murderous. But the nation 
derives a revenue from them ; our people have- 
invested millions of dollars in these branches of 
business, and many of them have learned no other 
vocation, and can see no other way so conven- 
ient to earn bread or amass wealth ; and so, 
notwithstanding it is patent to all that these 
infernal branches of commerce are fast ruining 
all the nations of the earth, and threatening the 
total destruction of the human race, the munici- 
pal authorities of our cities, the legislatures of 
our States, and the Congress of our nation, say 
these traffics must go on. And thus governments, 
whose legitimate business is to "protect persons 
and property, foster, encourage, license, and pro- 
tect, a business which enables and which author- 



THE RACE IMPERILED 11 

izes one class of their people to deprave and ruin 
all the others. 

Shall we place the drug trade with the opium 
trade, the liquor trade, and the tobacco trade ? 
Why not ? It is certainly not the least of the 
four evils ; and so far as fraud, and adulteration, 
and swindling, and killing, are concerned, it out- 
does all of them. 

Why should doctors and apothecaries be asked 
to relinquish a profitable business, just because it 
is injurious to society ? Opium-dealers will not do 
it ; rumsellers will not do it ; tobacconists will 
not do it ; and why should drug-dealers be ex- 
pected to do it ? 

No, no. You, who get gold in the ruin of 
your fellow-beings, do not expect, you have no 
right to expect, that physicians will be disinter- 
ested, and benevolent, and self-sacrificing, in their 
dealings with you, until you become at least just 
in your dealings with others. 

I say that to teach our women to be healthy, 
is to ruin the whole medical profession. So soon 
as this is done, there will not be a doctor in all 
the land except the woman physician and the 
man surgeon. 

THE RACE IMPERILED. 

The health of woman presents to us another 
most important consideration. The salvation of 
the human race absolutely depends upon it. She 



12 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

has to develop the germ of life. It is her function 
to sustain, nourish, train, and educate, the future 
man. To a very great extent, she imparts her 
organic constitution, and stamps her normal or 
. morbid conditions on her offspring. If she is 
unsound, her children cannot possibly be healthy. 

RIGHTS OF OFFSPRING. 

And has the offspring no claims — no rights ? 
Let me say to mothers, and let me repeat with 
still greater emphasis to fathers — for, after all, 
fathers are more to be blamed in this respect — 
that every child that is born into the world is en- 
titled to receive, of its earthly parents, the inher- 
itance of a sound organization. Yet, in the pres- 
ent state of society, this is the rare exception 
instead of the rule. There is no greater sin, 
there can be no greater crime in all of God's uni- 
verse, judged by the principle of eternal justice, 
than for parents to transmit to their children 
depraved and diseased bodies. Yet how nearly 
the whole world, the ]earned and the illiterate 
alike, high and low, rich and poor, with few 
exceptions, are wholly thoughtless, improvident, 
ignorant, and reckless. 

As a general rule, this first and most sacred 
duty of human society is totally disregarded. 
The great majority of children are the offspring 
of chance. So far as any intelligent exercise of 
reason on the part of parents is concerned, they 



RIGHTS OF OFFSPRING. 13 

come into the world hap-hazard. They are creat- 
ures frequently of lust, rather than love, and 
very often of mere sensuality in its lowest and 
most odious sense. And very frequently, too, 
they are the most unwelcome guests that could 
be introduced into the family circle. 

A child has the right to the inheritance of ab- 
solute health, perfect beauty, and complete good- 
ness of disposition. If it receive not these, it is 
defrauded of its birthright. And, think you, it 
will not have its revenge ? It certainly will. 
There is a " law of compensation " pervading all 
the universe, which harmonizes all apparent dis- 
crepancies, which eventually rights all wrongs, 
which insures in the end penalty to everything 
done amiss, and reward to every good work, and 
which secures, ultimately, perfect justice to all. 
If a parent, through ignorance or viciousness, rob 
the child of a proper bodily structure, and if so- 
ciety, through heedlessness or selfishness, deprive 
it of opportunity of normal growth and educa- 
tion, so surely as there is a law in nature and a God 
in Heaven, it will punish that parent and afflict 
that society precisely to the extent that it has 
been wronged. The true physiologist needs but 
glance at the swarming, vagrant children of our 
cities, and the frail and puny little ones of the 
country, to see the operation of this law. 

If the people could see this subject in its true 
light, and if men in authority and in influential 



14 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

positions in society could clearly understand this 
principle ; if ministers of the gospel, whose bus- 
iness it is to point the way to a higher and purer 
life ; if physicians, who claim to be the conserva- 
tors of the public health ; and if teachers, who 
strive to develop harmoniously all the powers of 
body and mind, would comprehend this great 
truth in all of its bearings, our land would not 
teem with diseased, deformed, ill-born, and ill- 
bred children, educated to all manner of profli- 
gacy, and sure almost to become youthful rowdies 
and adult vagabonds. But they would see how 
vastly better and cheaper it would be to train 
them all to virtue, and educate them to useful- 
ness, than it is to nurture them in evil and then 
provide them with penitentiaries and prisons. 

RESPONSIBILITIES OF PARENTS. 

All children would be beautiful if they were 
healthy, and they would be healthy if their par- 
ents were. And all children would be compar- 
atively good also, if, in addition to the health of 
both parents at the time of conception, the 
mother was rendered comfortable and happy in 
all her domestic relations and surrounding cir- 
cumstances during the period of pregnancy and 
nursing. A sound mind in a sound body on the 
part of the parents, and a life of truth and pu- 
rity, are the conditions which God and nature 
have appointed. 



AMERICAN MOTHERS. 15 

A married couple should no more allow a child 
to be conceived when either of them is in a state 
of fatigue from a hard day's work, or in any con- 
dition of bodily exhaustion, or mental disturb- 
ance, or agitation, grief, despondency, anxiety, 
passion, or fretfulness, than they would allow 
themselves to commit murder. Yet this is done 
continually ; it is rather the rule than the excep- 
tion in civilized life. And need we wonder at 
the increasing mortality from still births, maras- 
mus, and convulsions ? I have known more than 
one first child to be born idiotic because of the 
drinking and feasting which celebrated the wed- 
ding occasion. 

It is often said by medical writers, and it is 
the common observation of travelers, that Amer- 
ican women are, as a general rule, more frail, more 
diseased, and more rapidly decaying than the wom- 
en of any other civilized country on the globe. 
And this, I fear, is particularly the case with the 
rising generation of women — the girls. And one 
of the alarming signs of the times, the increas- 
ing disinclination to marry, on the part of the 
young men of our cities, is very justly attributa- 
ble to this cause more than to all others. 

AMERICAN MOTHERS. 

I certainly can intend no flattery to American 
mothers when I say that, so far as I can leam 
from reading and observation, there are no moth- 



16 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

ers on earth who, as a general rule, rear, and 
govern, and train, and educate, their children so 
recklessly of all considerations of health, so er- 
roneously in respect to physiological laws, so fool- 
ishly in respect to fashion, and so ruinously in 
respect to consequences, as do American mothers. 
This is not, however, all their fault. I am not 
going to put all the blame on her shoulders, nor, 
indeed, quite half of it. I blame man more for 
abusing her, and I blame still more the medical 
profession for misleading both. I regard woman 
as the victim rather than as the criminal, in rela- 
tion to the evils I am considering. She has but 
little opportunity to know any better or do any 
better than she does. And if, perchance, some 
woman who has in some way become intelligent 
on this subject, sets up the standard of truth in 
her household and dethrones fashion, and at- 
tempts to live rationally, and to train up her chil- 
dren healthfully, and objects to give them food 
or drink which will make them sick, and refuses 
to have them swallow poisons because they are 
sick, ten chances to one that friends and neigh- 
bors, relatives and doctors, of all the region round 
about, will come down upon her with an over- 
whelming avalanche of reproof and ridicule, to say 
nothing of slang and misrepresentation. 

WOMAN'S DISADVANTAGES. 

It is not in woman's nature wittingly to sacri- 



woman's disadvantages. 17 

fice her child for her own vanity or pleasure ; she 
will a thousand times sooner sacrifice herself to 
save her child^ Before we condemn her for de- 
stroying her own offspring, we must teach her 
how to save it ; and before we blame her for be- 
ing diseased, we must teach her how, and give 
her the means, to become healthy. 

Man, being more selfish, and taking advantage 
of the disabilities of woman, consequent on 
the function of maternity, has monopolized to 
himself most of the pleasant, wholesome, and 
profitable vocations, and all of the best educa- 
tional facilities; and thus he is enabled to de- 
velop his intellectual powers ; while woman is 
either made a kitchen drudge or a parlor toy. 
And when he has reduced her to bodily and 
mental inferiority, he calls her the " weaker ves- 
sel," and says, with stolid self-complacency, 
"Women are not capable of thinking and rea- 
soning like men." 

I blame the medical profession chiefly for 
woman's disabilities, follies, and infirmities. She 
has been misled and miseducated by it. She has 
been taught that she is naturally more frail and 
feeble and prone to disease than man ; and that 
she must be dosed and drugged with the most 
potent poisons for the most trivial indisposi- 
tions. 

Diseases of Woman. SJ 



18 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION VS. WOMAN. 

How does the medical profession treat the ef- 
forts of woman to redeem herself from sickness 
and suffering ? A few years ago, a few noble- 
minded women, in view of the dreadful sufferings 
and great needs of their own sex, and of the con- 
fessed inefficiency of the ordinary treatment of 
the diseases of woman, resolved to qualify them- 
selves, so far as a thorough and regular educa- 
tion could do it, for physicians. They were bit- 
terly opposed by the great body of the professors, 
and most indecently persecuted by the great body 
of the gentlemen medical students. But they 
persevered ; and now schools are established in 
which women received precisely the same profes- 
sional education as men, and are graduated ac- 
cording to law. And now the profession is be- 
coming alarmed. They begin to see to what 
practical result this movement is rapidly tending. 
It threatens soon to take from it the means 
-whereby it lives. The profession cannot prevent 
them from getting an education. It cannot con- 
trol the legislation of the States so as to deprive 
them of diplomas. There is only one thing it 
can do ; this is to abuse them ; and this it seems 
resolved to do. Will this succeed ? Will mal- 
treatment silence her ? Will persecution check 
her ? We predict otherwise. 

Already a Philadelphia medical society has de- 



MEDICAL PROFESSION VS. WOMAN. 19 

clared that its members shall not consult with 
women physicians. A Connecticut medical soci- 
ety has echoed the sentiment. A "reform " med- 
ical school has pronounced against the policy of 
educating women to the profession. The Boston 
Medical and Surgical Journal opposes woman 
physicians, and the Edinburgh (Scotland) Medi- 
cal College has formally voted not to give any 
diplomas to women. 

At the late meeting of the " American Medical 
Association" in Philadelphia, the physicians of 
the United States, as represented in that body of 
self-constituted conservators of the public health, 
by a majority vote, refused membership to phy- 
sicians, otherwise unimpeachable, w T ho consulted 
with doctors of the female sex, or with men of 
the African race. They even went so far as to 
ostracize those who taught in medical colleges 
where women or negroes are educated. 

I do not wonder at this opposition ; I should 
wonder if it were not so. Any physician who is 
sufficiently versed in the technical gibberish of 
the schools to write a text-book on the " Diseases 
of Women and Children," or to fill the chair of 
" Obstetrics and Diseases of Females," can safely 
prognosticate that, as soon as women get into the 
profession, a corresponding number of men will 
get out. 

But what objection does her brother make to 
her as a physician ? Ho raises no question of 



20 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN, 

competency : he does not pretend that she is not 
quite as successful as himself; he acknowledges 
that in many respects she has the advantage ; he 
confesses that her constitutional sympathies, her 
intuitive perceptions, her delicate appreciations, 
her natural tact and her better opportunities are 
all in her favor. He does not, and cannot, allege 
a shadow of a reason why she should not admin- 
ister to the sufferers of her own sex. And when 
the women graduates of our school give public 
lectures, and explain to the people in his pres- 
ence and in the presence of his patients the fal- 
lacies of his doctrines, and the horrid consequen- 
ces of his treatment, he does not, and dare not, 
gainsay their utterances. 

He well knows thai the most successful mid- 
wives and the most successful practitioners in 
the diseases peculiar to her sex, in all ages, have 
been women. But she is accused of being a 
woman ! Womanhood is her disqualification! 

ORIGIN OF WOMAN'S INFIRMITIES. 

Let us look a little into the origin of woman's 
infirmities, and see precisely what relation there 
is between the medical profession and her mani- 
fold and increasing maladies. And to understand 
this subject fully, we must trace her history up 
from the cradle. 

During the first four or five years of infancy, 
the rirl baby has nearly the same advantages a< 



ORIGIN OF WOMAN'S INFIRMITIES. 21 

the boy baby ; but, ever after, the girl is placed 
at a disadvantage. It is lucky, to begin with, if 
either girl or boy escapes a serious poisoning at 
the hands of the doctors before it is a month old. 
And if any child, in these days of almost constant 
dosing and drugging, lives a whole year after 
birth, without being maimed, marred, scarred, 
stunted, or deformed, by the murderous appli- 
ances of the "healing art," such child must be 
a happy exception to the unfortunate rule. Us- 
ually, an infant can not have a cough, a cold, a 
gripe, a sneeze, or a sniffle, however slight, with- 
out the doctor being called. And the doctor does 
— -what ? Point out the error in the child's man- 
agement ? ascertain the cause of the trouble and 
have it removed? instruct the mother or nurse 
in the laws of Hygiene ? Oh ! no ; nothing of 
the sort ; such doctoring would never pay. The 
profession could not live a year if it gave the 
mothers of sick babies good advice and withheld 
bad medicine. And so the doctor does — what ? 
Why, he poisons the little thing for life! This 
is what is expected of him ; it is what he is em- 
ployed to do, and he does it. And here is " orig- 
inal sin" in the physiological, or, rather, the 
pathological sense. Here is the " origin of evil " 
in the vital domain ; the first great act of disobe- 
dience which is sure, sooner or later, to bring 
death and many woes into the family circle. 
Several thousands of young drug doctors are 



22 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

turned out from the medical colleges annually to 
do — what ? To teach the world how to ayoid 
disease ? to be the exemplars of the laws of life ? 
to educate the people in the conditions of health ? 
to instruct the people how to ayoid the causes of 
disease ? to preach obedience to the laws of nat- 
ure ? Xot at all. They are as ignorant of these 
things as the people are. They are themselves 
among the chief transgressors ; their precepts and 
their examples are only leading the world more 
rapidly to perdition. Grim Death has no more ef- 
ficient emissaries. They go forth " poisoning and 
to poison."' If a baby is sick, they poison it ; if it 
continues sick, they poison it again. If the sick- 
ness is prolonged, they multiply these poisons ; 
and when the drug diseases supersede or super- 
vene upon the original disease, the doctors have 
an unlimited field of practice before them in 
drugging the symptoms of the drug diseases. 

One common-sensical mother or unsophistica- 
ted nurse is worth more than a regiment of young 
drug doctors, or old ones either, for sick babies. 
If any unusual pestilence — cholera, plague, or 
diptheria — should send to premature graves dur- 
ing the ensuing year, one half as many children 
as the doctors kill with their drug-poisons, a 
panic which would bring people to their prayers 
if not to their reason would pervade all the land. 

When the boy and girl arrive at the age of 
seven, eight, or ten years, the disadvantages of a 



ORIGIN OF WOMAN'S INFIRMITIES. 23 

fashionable education which regards fashion and 
" accomplishments " as superior to health and 
utility, become conspicuous. The boy is pro- 
vided with mechanical tools; he is taken into 
the fields and woods, and made acquainted with 
animals and machinery, farms and workshops. 
He runs, jumps, climbs trees, rides horses, drives 
oxen, works, plays, and develops his muscles 
while he expands his mind in a thousand ways. 
Thus he observes, compares, analyzes, reflects, 
and treasures up useful knowledge ; and thus he 
learns to work his way, to accomplish his pur- 
poses, to overcome obstacles, to subdue opposi- 
tion, to achieve success, to develop himself. 

But the little girl, what of her ? She is shut 
up in the nursery, or seated quietly in the par- 
lor with a doll-baby to study, and, perchance, a 
kitten for a companion. If she is irritable, and 
peevish, and sick, as she cannot help being, she 
is fed on candy and lozenges, and stuffed with 
sweet-cake. She is taught that little girls should 
dress up, sit still, and be pretty. She is told 
that it is vulgar to run and jump ; that only lit- 
tle boys are fitted to do out-door work or enjoy 
out-door play ; and thus she is deprived of the 
only possible means of acquiring a good constitu- 
tion, and of giving to the mental powers a high 
and ennobling direction, And yet she is ex- 
pected to be the mother of the race. She may 
be the mother of a race. 



24 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

She is to a great extent blasted, dwarfed, and 
perverted, in childhood; and just to that extent 
must her womanhood, if ever attained, be imper- 
fect. She is made to believe that young gentle- 
men are expected to act usefully, think ration- 
ally, feel normally, and do business; and that 
young ladies are made to be accomplished, feel 
amiable, follow the fashions, and get— married. 
Too often, before she is sufficiently developed for 
a husband she gets the consumption. And when, 
as the result of her miseducation, her intellect be- 
comes disordered, her feelings morbid, her judg- 
ment unreliable, her disposition eccentric, and 
her fancies fantastic, she is complacently told by 
those who have made her what she is — 

" Frailty, thy name is woman." 
DRESS AND RESPIRATION. 

As the girl grows up to womanhood, she is 
hampered and trammeled with a style of dress 
which renders it utterly impossible for her to ex- 
ercise properly or breathe freely. Heavy skirts 
drag down and displace the abdominal and pelvic 
viscera, and a " decent fit " around the waist pre- 
vents the normal play of the respiratory organs. 

Says A. K. Gardiner, M. D., of New York : "So 
soon as the sex of the child is made evident by 
any external manipulations of dress, so soon does 
the bodily degeneracy commence. Look at the 



DRESS AND RESPIRATION, 25 

dress of woman ! Were man so to direct the 
fashion of woman's dress in order to enable him, 
by physical force, to overcome her and tyrannize 
over her, he could not more completely fetter her 
than she shackles herself/' 

You may measure any woman's available 
power by her breathing capacity, and her diges- 
tive power is precisely proportioned to her respi- 
ration ; and the circulation and purity of blood is 
dependent on respiration, and nutrition is gov- 
erned by the circulation; and thus the very 
structures of the body are dependent on the 
amount of air taken into the lungs. 

As a general rule, the men of America are 
vastly better developed in the breathing appara- 
tus than are the women ; and this disproportion 
is greater with the people of the United States 
than with the people of any other nation on the 
globe. Contrast the full, rounded busts, the 
plump arms and rosy cheeks of the majority of 
Irish and German, and even English women in 
this country, with the narrow, tapering waists 
and "caved-in" vital organs of native Ameri- 
can women — I do not mean Indians, for I have 
yet to see the first specimen of a narrow chest in 
a red woman. 

It is of vastly more importance to society and to 
the race that woman should be well developed in 
the respiratory organs than it is that man should 
be; she has to breathe for more than herself. 



26 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN, 

While in the embryo state, the child must re- 
ceive its oxygen from the air which the mother 
inspires. Many a strong, vigorous mother has 
given birth to a frail, scrofulous child, because 
she was so plethoric, or sedentary, that she only 
breathed enough for herself. If either parent is 
to be restrained in the vital region and deprived 
of the breath of life, let it not be the one who is 
to nourish from her own blood and impress her 
own organic conditions on the future generations. 

The history of Miss Harriet Hosmer, the emi- 
nent sculptress, is instructive here. Her father, 
an eminent physician of Watertown, Mass., had 
lost wife and children of consumption, and fear- 
ing a like fate for Harriet, who was now the only 
survivor, he gave her dog, gun, and boat, and in- 
sisted on an out-door life as indispensable to 
health. She willingly acquiesced in her father's 
plans, and pursued her sports so energetically 
that she soon became a fearless horsewoman, a 
good shot, and an adept in rowing, swimming 
diving, and skating. She had also other induce- 
ments to open-air exercise, for, "many a time 
and oft, she might have been found in a certain 
clay-pit, not far from the parental residence, mak- 
ing early attempts at modeling horses, dogs, sheep, 
men and women, or any object which attracted 
her attention." 

Had Miss Hosmer been subjected to the ordi- 
nary treatment of girls or been doctored in theusu- 



DRESS AND THE SEXUAL FUNCTIONS. 27 

al method for consumptives, she would, in all prob- 
ability, have perished in early life ; but, " under 
the regimen which her father so wisely devised 
for her, she gradually acquired health and strength, 
and has reached the years of mature womanhood 
with a well-developed and robust body, and with 
a mind full of earnest purpose, noble ambition, 
and the most untiring energy and perseverance." 
If we could induce all of the fathers and moth- 
ers of our country to dismiss all of their drug- 
doctors, and to give their children a physiological 
education, those ever-present and still increasing 
pestilences, scrofula and consumption, would 
nearly disappear in the next generation, and en- 
tirely, in another. 

DRESS AND THE SEXUAL FUNCTIONS. 

As self-preservation is the first law of nature, 
those parents who damage their own constitu- 
tions and waste their vital stamina by unhygienic 
habits, dissipation or poisonous drugs, deprive 
their offspring of a proper organization. Many 
persons, perhaps a majority, seem to suppose that 
it makes little difference with offspring what 
they do to themselves — that individual life and 
health have little or nothing to do with the repro- 
ductive function. But it has everything to do 
with it. Individual life must first be provided 
for, and if vitality is exhausted, or vitalizing 



28 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

resources deficient, it is the offspring that suffers 
most. 

The disastrous effects of fashionable dress on 
the sexual organs and functions directly, and on 
the integrity and welfare of the race indirectly, 
is a subject on which physiologists have but one 
opinion, and on which medical men of all schools 
agree. 

I quote the following words of fearful import, 
from the latest standard work on the diseases of 
women ; a work just published by Henry A. Lea, 
of Philadelphia. The author is Professor T. 
Gaillard Thomas, M. D., of New York. Dr. 
Thomas says (page 58) : " The dress adopted by 
the women of our times may be very graceful 
and becoming, it may possess the great advan- 
tages of developing the beauties of the figure and 
concealing its defects, but it certainly is condu- 
cive to the development of uterine diseases, and 
proves not merely a predisposing but an exciting 
cause of them. For the proper performance of 
the function of respiration, an entire freedom of 
action should be given to the chest, and more 
especially is this needed at the base of the 
thorax, opposite the attachment of the important 
respiratory muscle, the diaphragm. The habit of 
contracting the body at the waist by tight cloth- 
ing confines this part as if by splints ; indeed, it 
accomplishes just what the surgeon does who 
bandages the chest for a fractured rib, with the 



DRESS AND THE SEXUAL FUNCTIONS. 29 

intent of limiting thoracic and substituting ab- 
dominal respiration. 

"As the diaphragm, thus fettered, contracts, 
all lateral expansion being prevented, it presses 
the intestines upon the movable uterus, and 
forces this organ down upon the floor of the pel- 
vis, or lays it across it. In addition to the force 
thus exerted, a number of pounds, say from five 
to ten, are bound around the contracted waist, 
and held up by the hips and the abdominal walls, 
which are rendered protuberant by the com- 
pression alluded to. The uterus is exposed to 
this downward pressure for fourteen hours out of 
every twenty-four ; at stated intervals being still 
further pressed upon by a distended stomach. 

"In estimating the effects of direct pressure 
upon the position of the uterus, its extreme mo- 
bility must be constantly borne in mind. No 
more striking evidence of this can be cited than 
the fact, that in examining it by Sim's speculum, 
the cervix is thrown so far back into the bottom 
of the sacrum as to make its engagement in the 
field of the instrument often very difficult, and 
that attention to this point in the arrangement 
of the patient will at once remove the difficulty. 
While the uterus is exposed by the speculum, it 
will be found to ascend with every expiratory 
effort, and descend with every inspiration ; and 
so distinct and constant are the rapid alterations 
of position thus induced, that in operations in 



30 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

the vaginal canal the surgeon can tell with great 
certainty how respiration is being affected by the 
anaesthetic employed. An organ so easily and 
decidedly influenced as to position by such slight 
causes must necessarily be affected by a constric- 
tion which, in autopsy, will sometimes be found 
to have left the impress of the ribs upon the liver, 
producing depressions corresponding to them. 

" No one will charge me with drawing upon 
my imagination, even in the remotest degree, for 
the details of the following picture ; for a little 
reflection will assure all of its correctness. A 
lady, who has habitually dressed as already de- 
scribed, prepares for a ball by increasing all the 
evil influences which result from pressure. Al- 
though she may be menstruating, she dances un- 
til a late hour of the night, or rather an early 
hour of the morning. She then eats a hearty 
supper, passes out into the inclement night air, 
and rides a long distance to her home. This is 
repeated frequently during each season, until ad- 
vancing age or the occurrence of disease puts an 
end to the process. 

" A great deal of exposure is likewise entailed 
upon women by the uncovered state of the lower 
extremities. The body is covered, but under the 
skirts sweeps a chilling blast, and from the wet 
earth rises a moist vapor that comes in contact 
with limbs encased in thin cotton cloth, which is 
entirely inadequate for protection. It is not sur- 



SHOULD FASHIONABLE WOMEN MARRY. 3T 

prising that evil often results to a menstruating 
woman thus constantly exposed/' 

SHOULD FASHIONABLE WOMEN MAKHY ? 

The work of Dr. Thomas is intended as a text- 
book for physicians. But the following words, 
delicate or indelicate, ought to be read by every 
young person in the land who contemplates 
matrimony : 

" To a woman who has systematically displaced 
her uterus by years of imprudence, the act of 
sexual intercourse, which, in one whose organs 
maintain a normal position, is a physiological 
process devoid of pathological results, becomes an 
absolute and positive source of disease. The 
axis of the uterus is not identical with that of 
the vagina. "While the latter has an axis co-in- 
cident with that of the inferior strait, the former 
has one similar to the superior. This arrange- 
ment provides for the passage of the male organ 
below the cervix into the posterior cul-de-sac, the 
cervix thus escaping injury. But let the uterus 
be forced down, as it is by the prevailing styles of 
fashionable dress, even to the distance of one 
inch, and the natural state of the parts is altered. 
The cervix is directly injured, and thus a physi- 
ological process is insensibly merged into one 
productive of pathological results. How often 
do we see uterine disease occur just after matri- 
mony, even where no excesses have been commit- 



32 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

ted. It is not an excessive indulgence in 
coition which so often produces this result, but 
the indulgence to any degree on the part of a 
woman who has disturbed the natural relations 
of the genital organs." 

All that Dr. Thomas affirms or implies is fully 
corroborated by other authors. In a work on 
Woman and her Diseases, by the late Professor 
Charles D. Meigs, of Jefferson Medical College, 
Philadelphia, the author makes the remark that, 
the pressure resulting from prolapsus of the 
uterus for half an inch often produces intolerable 
agony. 

DRUGGING AT PUBERTY. 

If the girl survive her infantile drugging, her 
mal-training and her miseducation, and grows up 
to womanhood, the disadvantages of false fash- 
ions and the evils of a false medical system fol- 
low. She is imperiled at every step. At 
the period of puberty an important change 
occurs in the development of the organism ; 
she becomes fitted for another range of func- 
tional processes, and is at this time liable to 
periodical indisposition. These ailments — diffi- 
culties in menstruation — are usually trifling, and 
are caused mainly by sedentary habits, dietetic 
errors, especially constipating food, overexertion, 
colds, &c. A little proper attention to diet, exer- 



DRUGGING AT PUBERTY. 33 

eise, ventilation, bathing, &c., would, in almost all 
cases, remove them in a short time. 

But, instead of this, the doctor is called upon, 
and emmenagogues, or " forcing medicines, 5 ' are 
resorted to. The patient is sorely and sadly 
damaged with the preparations of iron, mercury, 
iodine, antimony, and opium, or other narcotics, 
when a warm bath or a fomentation, with rest 
and quiet for a day or two, were all that nature 
required. And here is the origin of many dis- 
tressing chronic diseases of the reproductive 
organs, which often render the patient infirm 
and miserable for life. The extensive and in- 
creasing prevalence of uterine diseases and dis- 
placements is attributable to the drugs adminis- 
tered for the trivial ailments which attend the 
early stages of the menstrual effort, more than to 
all other causes combined, with the exception of 
fashionable dress. I have had scores of bedrid- 
den women to treat, whose long years of chronic 
disease, uterine inflammation and ulceration, pro- 
lapsus and other displacements, utter helplessness 
and dreary future, were all and wholly owing to 
a few weeks' drugging at fifteen or sixteen years 
of age. 

I have never found any difficulty in speedily 
overcoming all the disorders of incipient men- 
struation by means of hygienic appliances, 
when all drugs were kept out of the way. 

Disease of Woman, 3 



34 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN, 



SCIENTIFIC DRUGGEBY. 

People are little aware of the horrible mischief 
which is produced by the ordinary scientific 
treatment of the diseases of woman. A brief 
glance at the authorities may shed more light on 
the terrible delusion which prevails here than a 
long argument ; all can understand facts, though 
few may appreciate logic. Let us see precisely 
what are the remedies which are recommended 
by the standard authors, and approved by the 
text-books of medical schools. 

One of the late standard authorities is " The 
Disease of Females, by Fleetwood Churchill, M. 
D., F. It. S.," and it reflects very fully and very 
fairly the prevailing practice of the profession. 

It should be remarked that ail of the maladies 
under consideration are conditions of weakness 
and obstruction — so recognized by all authors. 
By whatever name the disorder m&y be known 
in the nosological arrangement, or by whatever 
cause it may have been produced, its essential 
elements are obstruction, or debility, or both. 
Well, then, what shall the medical man do to 
remove obstructions and invigorate the functions ? 
Churchill recommends for — 

Amenorrhcea. — Bleeding, leeches, cupping, blis- 
ters, aloes, assafetida, wine, iodine, ergot, carbo- 
nate of iron, copperas, metallic iron, madder, 
strychnine, cantharides, turpentine, savin, aconite. 



SCIENTIFIC DRUGGERY, 35 

Vicarious Menstruation. — Leeches, cupping, 
blisters, muriatic acid, aqua fortis, oil of vitriol, 
aloes, iron, opium, sugar of lead. 

r Dysmenorrhoea. — Bleeding, leeches, cupping, 
blisters, caustics, opium, scarifications, morphine, 
henbane, poison hemlock, camphor, Indian hemp, 
acetate of ammonia, ergot, alcohol, preparations 
of iron, zinc, tincture of Spanish flies, borax, 
hellebore, senega, snake root, salts, mercury, 
iodine, tartar emetic. 

Menorrhagia. — Bleeding, leeches, cupping, 
opium, sugar of lead, ergot, Indian hemp, ipecac, 
blue pill, elixir vitriol, sulphuric acid, nitric 
acid, hydrochloric acid, iron, copperas, logwood, 
drastic purgatives, gallic acid, oxide of silver, 
nettle juice, turpentine. 

Cessation of Menstruation. — Leeches, blisters, 
issues, setons, purgatives, hydrochlorate of am- 
monia. 

Chlorosis. — Blisters, mercurial inunction, rhu- 
barb, aloetic purgatives, ammonia, metallic iron, 
copperas, iodide of iron, chalybeate spring water, 
tannate of iron, citrate of iron, lactate of iron, 
proto-muriate of iron, hydrochlorate of iron, blue 
pill, henbane, mineral tonics generally, vegetable 
tonics generally, glauber salts. 

Leucorrhoea. — Leeches, cupping, blisters, bal- 
sam, copaiba, copperas, muriate of iron, ergot, log- 
wood, cubebs, colchicum, crab's eyes, Spanish flies, 
conium, iodine, opium, henbane, lunar caustic. 



06 HEALTH AXD DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

Irritable Uterus. — Leeches, cupping, blisters, 
scarifications, henbane, deadly nightshade, cam- 
phor, assafetida, mercury, arsenic. 

All of these prescriptions amount to nothing 
more nor less than an indiscriminate routine of 
the most deadly drags and destructives to be 
found in the materia medica. But the great 
question back of all this is, Do these things cure ? 
We have the testimony at hand which settles 
this question in the negative. 

SCANZONI VS. CHURCHILL. 

There has recently been issued from the press 
an elaborate work — a work of nearly seven 
hundred pages, on " The Diseases of the Sexual 
Organs of Woman," by F. W. Yon Scanzoni, 
Professor of Midwifery and Diseases of Females 
in the University of Wurzburg, Counselor to His 
Majesty the King of Bavaria, Chevalier of many 
Orders, translated from the French of Drs. H. 
Dorr and A. Socin, and annoted with the ap- 
proval of the author, by Augustus R Gardner, 
A. M., M. D., Professor of Clinical Midwifery and 
the Diseases of "Woman, in the New York Medi- 
cal College, author of " The Causes and Curative 
Treatment of Sterility ;" editor of " Tvler Smith's 
Lectures on Obstetrics ;" etc. 

The work of Dr. Scanzoni is the largest and 
the latest European work which the medical 
profession has aivpn to the world on the diseases 



SCANZONI VS. CHURCHILL. 37 

of woman ; and the imposing parade of author- 
ship ought to satisfy the most incredulous that 
the statements of the author are entitled to re- 
spectful consideration. 

Well, what does the learned professor, who has 
had so large an experience in the treatment of 
the diseases we have named, say of the ordinary 
remedies ? I extract his testimony in relation to 
a single one of these ailments, Hysteralgia. It 
is in the following words : — 

M We have almost exhausted all the series of 
medicaments recommended in the books of mod- 
ern authors ; narcotics in large doses ; powerful 
purgatives, iron, mercurials, quinine, arsenic, and 
many other means we have tried without the 
least result. Topical applications have been no 
more useful. We have omitted neither deep 
scarifications of the mouth of the womb, so much 
recommended, nor the applications of leeches, nor 
the dilatation of the cervical canal, by means of 
sounds and prepared sponge ; the introduction of 
narcotic agents or pieces of ice into the vagina ; 
lavements of the tincture of opium and the ex- 
tract of belladonna, etc., etc., but all without re- 
lief. Only once we produced some relief to a 
patient by the local application of the fumes of 
chloroform ; but this good effect was not of long 
duration!* 

Could any commentary add force to this sting- 
ing condemnation of the popular practice ? 



38 HEALTH AXD DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

Well might Dr. Ramage, of the London Royal 
College, pronounce the whole system of drug- 
medication a " burning shame to its professors." 

We must, however, in candor, acknowledge 
that, within a few years, the evidence of drug- 
medication has been somewhat investigated, 
especially with American physicians, and that 
the later authors recommend drug poisons in less 
variety and diminished quantity. But whether 
this improvement has resulted from the progress 
of Homeopathy, the diffusion of hygienic intel- 
ligence, the disinclination on the part of the pa- 
tient to swallow the drugs, or the observation of 
their disastrous consequences on the part of the 
drug doctors, or of all of these influences combined, 
we need not speculate. Humanity's hope is that 
this step in the right direction will be succeeded 
by other similar ones until the blessed ultimatum 
of STO DBUGGERY is reached. 

But, on referring to the treatment of menstrual 
diseases, as explained in the recent able work of 
Dr. Thomas, we see there is still room enough 
for improvement, as the frightful list of toxico- 
loo-ical agents which he recommends will show. 
They are as follows : — 

For Dysmenorrhea. — Colchieum, guaiac, bleed- 
ing, preparations of iron, Indian hemp, hydrate 
of chloral, belladonna, assafetida, opium, mer- 
cury, iodine, nitrate of silver, carbolic acid. 

For Menorrhagia: — Elixir vitriol, opium, sul= 



DR. PRESCOTT ON DRUGGERY. 39 

phuric acid, gallic acid, ergot, Indian hemp, prep- 
arations of iron, alum, tannin, mercury, bleeding, 
iodine, nitric acid, muriatic acid. 

Amenorrhea. — Bleeding, preparations of iron, 
strychnia, quinine, aloes, myrrh, rue, savin, ergot. 

Leucorrhoea. — Bleeding, persulphate of iron, 
alum, tannin, oak bark, zinc, lead. 

Chlorosis. — Arsenic, strychnine, quinine, sac- 
charated carbonate of iron, iron by hydrogen, bit- 
ter wine of iron, potassa, wine, whisky, malt 
liquors. 

It is a " poor pathology, and worse practice/' 
that can unite the standard medical authorities 
of the world in prescribing arsenic, mercury, 
strychnine, iron, and bleeding, for nearly all the 
ills that woman's flesh is heir to. Was there not 
as much truth as poetry in the declaration of 
Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, M. D., which 
so astounded and confounded the Massachusetts 
Medical Society that " mankind have been liter- 
ally drugged to death "? 

DR. PRESCOTT ON DRUGGERY. 

After a lecture to ladies, in Boston, in March, 
1862, I called on the venerable Dr. Prescott of 
Farmington, Me., who happened to be present, to 
state the conclusions of his experience. He read- 
ily responded, and stated that in reviewing the 
results of an extensive practice in all forms of 
diseases of women, he could not ascertain that a 



48 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

single ease of many thousands had ever been 
cured or materially benefited by drug medica- 
tion, either in his own practice or in that of his 
professional brethren. On the contrary, multi- 
tudes had been sadly damaged, and many killed 
outright. Dr. Prescott is known throughout 
New England as a physician of large experience, 
and as a man of irreproachable integrity. Twelve 
years previously he repudiated draggery, and has 
since practiced the hygienic system. 

DRUGGING IX ACUTE DISEASES. 

But in chronic diseases, in which the patient 
may be dragged toward death for five, ten, or 
twenty years, and u still live," the fatal tendency 
of the practice cannot be very well understood 
by the non-professional people. They are very 
apt to think, and generally do think, that the 
very medicines which have produced all of their 
maladies, after the first one, and ruined their 
constitutions, have reailv saved their lives a dozen 
of times. And the more they are damaged and 
diseased by the drug-poisons, the louder the de- 
luded victims clamor for more. 

Let us see, then, how drug medication works 
in acute diseases, where death or recovery must 
be determined in a few days ; and for an illustra- 
tion, I select the disease called puerperal fever. 
There is much discrepancy in the profession re- 
specting the " seat " and 'pathology — as it is called 



PROFESSOR OILMAN ON PUERPERAL FEVER 41 

— of this disease ; but all are agreed that it is 
essentially an acute inflammation of some portion 
of the abdominal or pelvic viscera or structures, 
with an accompanying fever. But this concord 
in nosology does not lessen the discord in ther- 
apy, for two exactly opposite methods of treat- 
ment are recommended by the highest medical 
authorities. Professor Alonzo Clark, M. D., of 
the New York College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, earnestly advises active stimulation, while 
Professor Charles D. Meigs, M. D., of the Jefferson 
Medical College of Philadelphia, as strenuously 
insists on copious depletion. The stimulating 
plan consists of opium, brandy, quinine, calomel, 
etc., internally ; and hot flannel, turpentine, etc., 
externally. The depleting plan consists of bleed- 
ing, salts, veratrum, digitalis, etc. 

Now, if one of these methods of treatment is 
right, the other is certainly wrong. But the ex- 
act truth is, they are both wrong. The patient 
has a much better chance to live under no treat- 
ment than under either plan. And the fatality 
attending the disease — more than one-half the 
cases terminating in death — is, at least, presump- 
tive evidence against both kinds of medication. 

PROFESSOR GILMAN ON PUERPERAL FEVER. 

And here the testimony and experience of Pro- 
fessor Gilman, of the New York College of Phy- 
sicians and Surgeons, are valuable and significant. 



42 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

In a classical lecture to his medical class, in 
the winter of 1862, Dr. Gilrnan said : — 

" Mild cases will recover under any treatment ; 
severe cases die under all treatment. You are 
therefore justified in trying any plan you can 
think of. In Bellevue Hospital, twenty-two out 
of twenty-three patients have died. In the Paris 
and London hospitals, seventy-five per cent die. 
One physician had ninety-five cases, and lost 
them all." 

This statement concerning the mortality of 
this disease, so far as the Parisian hospitals are 
concerned, is corroborated by Anna Inman, M. T>., 
a graduate of the Hygeio-Therapeutic College, 
who spent a year in the hospitals of that city. 

Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, Scotland, 
states, in Braithwaite's Retrospect for January, 
1861, that three thousand mothers die annually 
in England and Wales, during the lying-in pe- 
riod, and a majority of them of puerperal fever. 

With regard to the treatment of the disease, 
Dr. Giiman recommends opium, not because he 
has any faith in it, or in anything else, but be- 
cause he can administer it with "less of the 
blackness of despair" He recommends, also, hot 
poultices, but objects to bleeding. He regards 
turpentine as exceedingly pernicious and dis- 
tressing. He would rather keep the patient un- 
der chloroform. He condemns calomel. He says 
that veratrum will reduce the pulse from 140 to 



DRUGGING DURING PREGNANCY. 43 

100, but in a few hours the patient is dead. 
Such facts and figures require no comment. If 
the reader cannot understand the lesson taught 
in their naked presentation, he would not believe 
though ten thousand should rise from their graves, 
and declare themselves to have been the vic- 
tims of 

"The deadly virtues of the healing art." 
DRUGGING DURING PREGNANCY. 

But if the woman escapes with dear life the 
ailments incident to puberty, other perils are be- 
fore her. In the common order of events, the 
matrimonial relation is formed. Then come child- 
birth and nursing, with all their joys and sorrows. 
Lucky is the woman who can, on these occasions,, 
escape the doctors lancet and drugs. During 
pregnancy, she usually suffers more or less of 
nausea, cramps, constipation, vertigo, etc., for 
which she is bled, physicked, and narcotized, pre- 
disposing her to hemorrhage, milk-leg, broken 
breast, and other sequelce, and multiplying the 
occasions for taking more medicines. 

DRUGGING DURING THE LYING-IN PERIOD. 

After confinement, the majority of women are 
troubled (and no wonder) more or less with indi- 
gestion, constipation, sour stomach, flatulence, 
sore mouth, sick headache, etc., for which chalk. 



44 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

soda, saleratus, magnesia, lunar caustic, bismuth, 
blue pill, etc., are prescribed. And now the med- 
icines are doing a double work of mischief. These 
drugs which she is continually taking into her 
system, under the name of medicine, deprave the 
blood, vitiate all of the secretions, and poison the 
very fountain whence the new-born being de- 
rives its nourishment. 

These drug poisons must be expelled. The 
living system gets rid of them through every 
available channel. And that portion which 
passes off with the milk often destroys the life 
of the nursing infant, or renders it a puny, fee- 
ble thing for life. 

So much for the child. It must be at all times 
liable to canker, colic, humors, rashes, convul- 
sions, and death, so long as its mother is contin- 
ually taking into her system that which contam- 
inates and impoverishes the only source of its 
subsistence. 

CHRONIC DRUG DISEASE. 

But if the mother survives the terrible ordeal 
which a false medical system imposes on her, 
there is yet trouble enough in the future. The 
dosings of infancy, the druggings of puberty, and 
the poisonings of her maternity, have laid the 
foundations for innumerable and nameless chronic 
diseases ; and now these must be doctored secun- 
dum artem. And thus medical science has laid 



CHRONIC DRUG DISEASE. 45 

the foundation for an extensive practice in the 
healing art — -provided the patient lives long 
enough. 

In due time, the woman comes to be regarded 
as a confirmed invalid. And no sooner is she 
" cured " of one malady, than another " sets in." 

How strange that some new disease is always 
ready to " supervene " so soon as the existing one 
is " subdued !" Her aches and pains, and " sink- 
ing spells," and flutterings, and gonenesses, and 
short breathings, and palpitations, and dragging 
sensations, and nervousness, require, in the judg- 
ment of the family physician, a course of tonics, 
nervines, and stimulants, and quassia, carbonate 
of ammonia, assafetida, castor, musk, valerian, 
spices, aromatics, phosphate of iron, or iron-by- 
hydrogen, wine, brandy, porter, ale, lager beer, 
etc., etc. 

She is also put on the medico-slop diet of 
the pharmacopoeias— fed on such delicate abom- 
inations as panada, starch puddings, beef tea, 
mutton broth, oyster soup, chicken gravy, but- 
tered toast, and sugar nick-nacks. In a word, 
instead of beii^g nourished and strengthened, she 
is merely stuffed and stimulated. 

All this makes a bad matter worse ; and at 
length the doctor, having treated the general dys- 
peptic condition for a few months, or a few years, 
looks a little deeper into the case, and finds out 
that the patient has a torpid- liver. Then come 



46 HEALTH AND DISEASES OP WOMAN. 

calomel and opium, perhaps blue pill again, to 
" touch up " the hepatic function, with henbane, 
or conium, or morphia, to quiet the irritation. 

Well, in due time the torpid liver is " cured," 
or its action so depressed that it ceases to make 
any further resistance to the medicines, and now 
the doctor discovers that jaundice has " set in." 
Verily it has. And the drugs are just what have 
set it in. But this jaundice must be " treated ;" 
and so the persevering physician doses it, or the 
patient, with a combination of " alteratives " — 
antimony, hydriodate of potassa, yellow dock, 
bitter sweet, blue flag, mandrake, black cohosh, 
corrosive sublimate, iodine, and arsenic. 

And thus another set of poisons are sent into 
the vital domain, with the inevitable result of 
another set of drug diseases. Soon, another 
diagnosis is made, and the disease is pronounced 
kidney complaint. This is medicated with 
leeches, cuppings, salts, antiphlogistics, diuretics, 
alkalies and counter irritants, and the next phase 
of the malady is said to be nervous debility. 
And again the patient must be put on tonics, 
stimulants, and nervines, as lunar caustic, phos- 
phorus, ammonia, extract of hops, cascarilla, 
myrrh, hy pophosphites, preparations of iron, cam- 
phor, ether, spirits of nitre, compound spirits of 
lavender, golden seal, unicorn, wormwood, thor- 
ough wort, skunk cabbage, etc., etc. 

When the sensibility of the nervous system is 



CHRONIC DRUG DISEASE. 47 

sufficiently subdued, the nervous debility is as 
subdued also. The disease is " cured," though 
the patient is nearly killed ; but no sooner is the 
cure achieved than (how unfortunate !) still 
another disease " supervenes." Now the mus- 
cular system gives out ; the back becomes weak, 
and the limbs tremulous. The kind and ever- 
faithful physician now diagnosticates spinal ir- 
ritation. Still he is not without hope for his 
patient. The resources of his art are immense. 
There are in the apothecary shop at least one 
thousand drugs which he has not yet adminis- 
tered, and there are numerous processes which he 
has not yet brought into requisition. Why should 
he be discouraged ? So long as there is life 
there is hope — at least of making a bill. 

Blistering, cupping, leeching, scarifying, pus- 
tulations, caustics, issues, setons ruoxa burnings 
and the actual cautery, are the scientific reme- 
dies for spinal irritation. 

The marring, and scarring, and haggling, and 
mangling, finally overcome the spinal irritation, 
and then we come to the end of the chapter, 
which is neuralgia. 

Neuralgia is regarded as incurable. But there 
is one consolation — there are no more diseases to 
" set in." The patient has got below the range 
of their action, and hence can not be " attacked " 
by them. Her vitality is too low to respond to 
morbific causes, hence they may remain in her 



48 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

system without any special effort to get rid of 
them. She cannot, therefore, have any particular 
disease known to the nosology, but she can be 
very wretched. 

The doctors can cure almost everything except 
neuralgia. We have seen how effectually they 
cure dyspepsia, liver complaint, jaundice, kidney 
disease, nervous debility and spinal irritation, 
but neuralgia is peculiarly a " medieorum op- 
probrium." Yet medical science does not whol- 
ly despair, it can still " alleviate the symptoms." 
For what did " nature provide " morphine, qui- 
nine, stramonium, belladonna, prussic acid, vera- 
tria, aconite, chloroform, digitalis, henbane, rats- 
bane, dogsbane, fleabane, and all the banes, 
venoms and viruses, all the drugs and die stuffs, 
and dregs and scum of the mineral, vegetable, and 
animal kingdoms, except to quiet pain ? And so 
long as the poor patient is dosed with narcotics 
and depressants below the point of susceptibility, 
she may be kept oblivious of misery. Has not 
medicine been entitled the art divine ? I fear 
the Irish doctor was not far wrong when he 
presented a bill to his wealthy neighbor : " To 
curing your wife till she died." 

And now after medical skill has done its best, or 
its worst, surgical ingenuity exhausts itself in vain 
efforts tq repair the damages occasioned by bad liv- 
ing and worse doctoring. The uterine organs be- 
come permanently congested, relaxed, and debili- 



CHRONIC DRUG DISEASE. 49 

tated, ulcerations occur, excrescences form, and 
displacements result. 

These are treated indiscriminately with 
astringents, caustics, pessaries, braces, leechings, 
scarifyings and burnings, which, although in some 
cases temporary relief is obtained, never fail to 
aggravate the difficulties in the end. 

Induration paralysis, fistulous openings, ex- 
tensive inflammations, permanent adhesions, fun- 
gous excrescences, and cancerous ulcerations, are 
among the frightful catalogue of evils which re- 
sult from these attempts to give " mechanical 
support " to the displaced viscera. 

Not long since, I had a patient under treatment 
for erosive or cancerous degeneration of the ute- 
rus, the consequence of the prolonged employ- 
ment of pessaries. And a few years ago, I was 
consulted by a lady who had a fistulous ulcer 
opening externally from the bowels, just below 
the umbilicus, through which the fecal matters 
were discharged, produced by wearing an "ab- 
dominal supporter." 

A few years ago, I visited a young lady in 
Philadelphia who had been a bed-ridden invalid 
for fifteen years, in consequence of a retroversion 
of the womb. Her father was wealthy, and had 
employed the most eminent physicans and sur- 
geons of that doctor-making city, who had in- 
vented a bureau drawer full of " supporters " for 
the displaced organ; and they had "toned her 

Disease of Woman. 4 



50 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

up " with tonics, and " quieted her down " with 
nervines, and nourished her on " blood food" 
preparations of iron, until her muscular system 
was as limsy as a wet rag. And these are but 
examples of hundreds whose cases have come 
under my observation and treatment. 

I cannot pursue this branch of my subject here. 
Those who would have fuller information are re- 
ferred to my larger works, " Pathology of the 
Reproductive Organs," and " Uterine Diseases 
and Displacements." The limits of this work 
will only enable me to show the errors and ab- 
surdities of the prevailing medical system and 
indicate 

THE BETTER WAY. 

If I should succeed in inducing all who are af- 
flicted with the maladies under consideration to 
abandon drug-medication of every kind, at once 
and forever, leaving them in all other respects to 
the same influences, I should be the means of 
saving many lives and an incalculable amount of 
suffering ; but I propose to do more. Almost all 
of these ailments are readily curable by hygienic 
appliances. The exceptions are very few, and 
confined almost wholly to the cases in which the 
patients' vitality has been nearly all drugged out 
of them. Indeed, I seldom find any serious dif- 
ficulty in managing the cases, so far as the orig- 
inal maladies are concerned ; but it not unfre- 



THE BETTER WAY. 51 

quently happens that the drug-poisons have 
made such ravages on the constitutional stamina, 
that the patient, although capable of being ren- 
dered comfortable, can never be made vigorous. 
These patients often come to us with only the 
remains of a shattered organism, and seem to ex- 
pect that we can, by some marvelous, if not mi- 
raculous, "cold-water" process, reconstruct them 
as good as new. 

But this can not be done. Vitality once lost 
can never be regained. Says Professor Clarke, 
of the New York College of Physicians and sur- 
geons: "All of our medicines are poisons, and as 
a consequence every dose diminishes the patient's 
vitality." Let those who have suffered a dimi- 
nution of vitality one hundred or one thousand 
times in this way, calculate, if they can, the ag- 
gregate loss, and then let them reflect on the 
declaration of Professor Draper, of the New York 
University Medical School: "Vitality once lost 
can never be regained." 

All that our system can do for the abused or- 
ganism of these miserable sufferers is to put them 
in healthy conditions. We can restore them to 
the normal use of all there is left of themselves ; 
and this is much. It is often the transition, as 
it were, from death unto life ; from wretchedness 
unto happiness. 

When I am asked what I would do or have 
done to a woman suffering any form of disease 



52 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

peculiar to her sex, I invariably answer, First of 
all, stop taking medicine. Cease to do evil. 
There is not one woman in a thousand, provided 
she is not already death-struck, who has been in 
the habit of taking medicine for years, who will 
not improve at once on discontinuing it entirely. 
Many hundreds have told me the same story, and 
I have yet to find the first exception ; and there 
are few adult persons who can not refer to such 
cases within the circle of their acquaintance. 

Sometimes patients who have been drug-doc- 
tored five or ten years, leave off medicine in very 
despair ; in other cases, their physicians become 
absolutely tired of drugging them, and abandon 
them to their fate ; but I never knew nor heard 
of such a discontinuance of druggery that was 
not followed by an immediate improvement of 
the patient's health. 

But the patient need not be limited to this 
merely negative advantage ; she may perchance 
adopt the appliances of the True Healing Art, 
remedial even beyond her most sanguine expec- 
tations. The letters I have received from wives 
and mothers, who had endured half a life of dis- 
ease, doctors' drugs, and misery, but who are now 
in the enjoyment of health, happiness, and happy 
homes, could be counted by thousands. 

Nor is the Hygienic treatment so afflicting a 
dispensation as many have been led to believe. 
The majority of patients at a good establishment 



THE BETTER WAY. 53 

are more comfortable under treatment than they 
could be without. It is the only place where 
some of them can be out of misery. The whole 
discipline of a properly conducted institution 
and the whole management of the patient are 
calculated to render her sensations more agree- 
able, and life more enjoyable. It is very 
true that, in the first instance, some pa- 
tients suffer for a short time the deprivation 
of accustomed stimuli; but this is soon and 
amply compensated by the restoration of the 
normal sensations, giving a keen relish for the 
simplest aliments. She must abandon tea, coffee, 
grease and gravies, candies and confections, all 
forms of constipating food and all stimulating 
beverages. The stomach must be no longer a 
drug-shop, nor a common reservoir for all the un- 
clean things and indigestible trash of the shops 
and market places. 

Those things which have normal relations to 
the living system should be employed as remedial 
agents, instead of those materials which are in- 
compatible with vital organs. Unleavened bread 
must take the place of aloes and rhubarb ; good 
fruit must be taken instead of jalap and cream of 
tartar; fresh air must supersede squills and ipecac ; 
exercise must substitute gum drops and lager- 
beer ; sleep must be resorted to instead of mor- 
phine ; pure, soft water must expel salts and 
antimony; bathing and friction be employed in 



:4 hz^itz ui :: iases of wo*l 

Hen of liniment and rubefacients, and paralyzing 
machinery be exchanged for vitalizing manipu- 
lations. Temperance in all things mus: st the 
waste of vital power, and obedience to organic 
law arrest the premature decay of the organic 
tissue* 

TOBAC [A3 

I cannot conclude this subject without advert- 
ing very briefly to anothe: D whose : ous 
effects on the health of many womd e ; m I : be 
very little understood- I mean tobacco-tic 
men. I know that I am liable here of bein.; 
suspected of an attempt at exaggeration — At 
straining a point — but I undertake :: :hat 
thousands of women and children are rendered 
miserable invalids, and that some sn- kfllc :ut- 
ricl:. "7 :;ir :: :is:n:\:s crr:^:h an:l ::es:ilen: ier- 
spiration of tobacco-smoking-and-chewing . - 
: 1:1 is -mi :V/_ers. 

Those who do not use tobacco are V: istty more 
sens : t its influence than those who do. 
Tlrv ;;-nn:: lime ii ::^:;.. :•: ^l::i its ieleteri:i;s 
fumes without being more or less i:::ated; and 
the purer their instincts, and the less gross then 
Liiiis :■: r-:i: the Line E..:i::elT ™ 11 they feel 
ttfi injurious influence. 

You know how i: wMi the ez erienced liq- 
uor drinker; he can often swallow a pint of 
brandy, or a quart of whi= keg of lag r 



TOBACCO VS. WQMAIf. 55 

a day, and still keep about, and imagine himself 
sober, and not be aware of any foulness of stom- 
ach or lungs, of blood or brains ; yet the horrid 
stench of his breath may disgust and sicken one 
who is not addicted to the habit. 

The veteran tobacco sot has so stupefied his 
senses, and perverted his instincts, that he can 
hold a quid of the filthy weed in both corners of 
his mouth, and a pipe or cigar between them, and 
find the sensations the most delightful that his 
gross nature is capable of realizing, when to all 
uncontaminated noses he is as offensive as a cess- 
pool. Every breath of air that a tobacco-smoking 
man exhales from his lungs, and every particle of 
perspiration that a tobacco-chewing man emits 
from his skin, is loaded with deadly poison. And 
here is the rationale of many nervous, irritable, 
and declining women. They seldom know, their 
husbands rarely suspect, and their drug doctors 
never imagine, what causes the trouble. 

I have had many patients who had become 
dyspeptic, hysterical, afflicted frequently with 
vertigo, syncope, and various " strange spells " 
which I could and did readily trace to the viru- 
lent emanations of their tobacco-using " bosom 
companions.'' On putting the twain asunder for 
a few weeks, and subjecting the " better halves " 
to the proper processes of purification, they 
would rapidly recover health, and soon be ready 
to return to their loving lords to be poisoned 



56 HEALTH AND DISEASES OF WOMAN. 

again in the same way. I have been obliged to 
offend some husbands by declaring to them that 
they must either get a divorce from their tobacco, 
occupy apartments separate from their wives, or 
see their wives die in a year or two of consump- 
tion. 

One of the most deplorable signs of the times 
is the rapidly increasing prevalence of this most 
detestable and disgusting vice among the young 
men of our country. And if the American 
women, maids and matrons, do not soon exert 
themselves to persuade or shame their lovers, 
husbands, and sons, out of the habit of tobacco- 
using, the nation, if not the race, is as surely 
doomed as there is a law in nature or a God in 
the universe. 

Yet if fathers smoke and chew tobacco, why 
should not their sons ? And if fathers and sons, 
why not mothers and daughters ? If the old use 
it, why not the young ? If doctors and ministers 
smoke tobacco, why should not their patients and 
their flocks imitate their example ? If the lead- 
ers and teachers of the people smoke, why should 
not the people themselves smoke, and society go 
to perdition in one universal tobacco smudge ? 



GLOSSAET 



Abdominal. Pertaining to the bowels. 

Aconite. Wolf's bane ; a poisonous plant. 

Alterative. That which restores healthy functions without 

sensible evacuations. 
Alkali. A class of caustics. 
Amenorrhoea. Suppression of the menses. 
Ansesthetic. An agent that deprives of feeling. 
Ammonia. An alkali. 
Autopsy. Examination after death. 
Antimony. A metal. 
Antiphlogistic. Reducing ; cooling. 
Astringent. Binding, contracting ; opposed to laxative. 

Belladonna. A drug prepared from the deadly nightshade. 
Bismuth. A metal. 

Borax. A salt formed by a combination of boracic acid with 
soda. 

Cantharides. Blistering plaster made of flies. 

Caustic. A substance that when applied to flesh burns or cor- 
rodes. 

Colchicum. A vegetable drug. 

Cervix. The neck of the womb. 

Chronic. Of long standing. 

Citrate. Chemical drug, as citrate of iron. 

Constipating. Crowding or cramming into a narrow compass. 

Conservator. One who preserves from injury. 

Conium. Poison hemlock. 

Cupping. The operation of drawing blood with a cupping 
glass. 

Cul-de-sac. A blind sack. 

Cubeb. A vegetable drug. 

Chlorosis. Green sickness, deficiency in blood. 

(57) 



58 GLOSSARY. 

Deplete. To bleed, to lower or weaken. 

Diaphragm. The large breathing muscle between the chest 

and the belly. 
Distended. Expanded. 
Dietetic. Pertaining to food. 
Displacement. Out of place. 
Digitalis. The plant called foxglove. 
Diuretic. Medicine that acts on the kidneys. 
Drastic. Physicing ; cathartic. 
Dysmenorrhcea. Painful menstruation. 

Elixir. A medicine. 

Embryo. In physiology, the first rudiments of a new creature. 

Emmenagogue. Medicine used to produce menstruation. 

Emanation. Proceeding from. 

Ergot. Blasted rye. 

Fecal. Wastes discharged from the body. 
Fistula. Pipe in ulcer, or narrow canal lined by false mem- 
brane. 
Flatulence. Wind in stomach or bowels. 
Fomentations. Hot applications. 
Function. Office, action of an organ. 

Germ. First principle. 

Genital. Pertaining to the sexual. 

Henbane. A poisonous plant. 

Hepatic. Pertaining to the liver. 

Hellebore. A poisonous plant. 

Hemorrhage. Any discharge of blood from vessels destined 

to contain it. 
Homeopathy. The doctrine that like cures like. 
Hygienic. Healthful. 
Hydrochloric. A drug used as a medicine. 
Hysteralgia. A species of nervous affection. 
Hygeio- Therapeutic. Treating diseases hygienically. 

Inunction. To besmear, anoint. 

Iodine. A medicine used as a local irritant. 

Ipecac. A vegetable drug used as an emetic. 



GLOSSARY. 59 

Jaundice. Disease of the liver. 

Lacteal. Pertaining to milk. 
Lavement. A washing or bathing, an injection. 
Leech. A worm used in extracting blood. 
Leucorrhoza. Discharge from uterus ; catarrh. 
Logwood. Drug used in coloring. 

Marasmus. Wasting. 
Maltreatment. Bad treatment. 
Magnesia. A drug, species of earth. 
Menstrual. Pertaining to the menses. 
Menorrhagia. Profuse menstruation, flooding. 
Morbid. Not healthy, diseased. 
Morphine, Preparation of opium. 

Narcotic. Stupefying. 

Nervine. Acting on the nervous system. 

Neuralgia. Pain in a nerve. 

Normal. Healthy. 

Nosological. Pertaining to the classification of diseases. 

Obstetric. Pertaining to midwifery. 

Obstruction Hindrance, impediment. 

Opprobrium medicorum. (Lat.) The reproach of physicians. 

Organic. Pertaining to, or having, organs. 

Ostracize. To cast out from social or private favor. 

Oxygen. Air. 

Pathology. Explains the nature and causes of disease. 
Panada. A mixture of spirits and other ingredients for the 
Pessary. A surgical instrument. [sick. 

Pelvic, Pertaining to the pelvis. 
Pharmatopoza. A work which treats of drugs. 
Physiology. Treats of functions. 
Plethoric. Overfullness. 
Protuberant. Protruding. 
Prolapsus, Falling. 
Prognosticate. To predict. 

Puberty. The nge at which a person is capable of begetting 
children. 



60 GLOSSARY, 

Purgative. Physic. 

Puerperal. Pertaining to childbirth. 

Respiratory. The act of breathing. 
Reproduction. To produce again. 
Retroversion. Backward, falling back. 
Rhubarb. A vegetable. 
Rubefacient. A liniment. 

Sacrum. Lower part of spine. 

Savin. A drug. 

Scarify. To cut. 

Scrofulous. A constitutional disease. 

Sedentary. Setting. 

Secundem arteni' According to rule. 

Senega. Drug. 

Seton. Rowel. 

Sequelse. (Lat.) Something that follows. 

Sexual. Pertaining to sex. 

Squills. Kind of onion used as a medicine. 

Stamina, Force. 

Sterility. Barrenness. 

Strychnine. Medicine obtained from dog button. 

Syncope. Fainting, or swooning. 

Tannate. A compound of tannic acid and a base. 

Technical. Specially appropriate. 

Thorax. Pertaining to the chest. 

Tonic. Giving tone. 

Torpid. Inactive. 

Toxicology. Doctrine of poisons. 

Ultimatum. The last. 
Umbilicus. The navel. 
Uterus. The womb. 

Vagina. A canal. 

Veratrum. Drug. 

Vertigo. Dizziness. 

Viscera. Contents of the thorax, or abdomen. 

Vital. Life. 



OUE PLATFOEM 



[At a meeting of the friends of Reform, held at the Health Reform In- 
stitute, Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 1, 1872, this Platform was unanimously 
adopted.] 

1. God, in the creation of man, established laws 
pertaining to both his moral and physical natures, which, 
had he always obeyed them, would have given him 
immunity from sickness, and would have perpetuated his 
life. Sickness and suffering had their origin in the 
violation of these laws. 

2. As man cannot have eternal life without strict 
obedience to moral law, so he cannot have deliverance 
from the terrible bondage of sickness and premature 
death without strict observance of physical law. 

3. The moral and physical natures of man are so 
intimately related that it is impossible to live in viola- 
tion of either of these laws without doing violence to 
the other. Physical law, therefore, in its sphere, is 
as sacred and binding upon man as moral law. 

4. The gospel teaches that man should live health- 
fully as well as righteously. 

5. We recognize in nature the power to restore to 
health without the aid of medicines. The true physi- 
cian supplies conditions : Nature cures. 

6. Our materia medica : Good food, pure air, pure 
soft water, light, heat, exercise, proper clothing, rest, 
sleep, moral and social influences. 

7. Our motto : Temperance in all things. Not only 
in eating, drinking, and in labor, but in everything 
that tends to exhaust the vitality of the system. 

8. It has been well said, " A contented mind is a 
continual feast." A well-founded trust in God is the 
best and surest promoter of cheerfulness of mind ; and 
without this all other means may fail. 



Health Reform Institute. 

BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN. 



This Institution has a competent corps of Physicians, both 
male and female, and is under the general supervision of a 
Board of Directors. 

To those who are suffering from impaired health, and 
especially to those who have lost confidence in drugs, we 
would say, Do not Despair ! There is a method of treating 
disease, and of preserving health, so simple, and yet so effi- 
cient, that those who avail themselves of its benefits are 
saved an untold amount of suffering, and may escape an un- 
timely grave. At this Institute diseases are treated on 

HYGIENIC PEnClPLE§. 

Instructions, both Theoretical and Practical, are given to 
Patients- and Boarders on the great subject of 

How to Lire so as to Preserre Health, 

and also respecting the safe and sure means of Recovery from 
Dhease. In' the treatment of the sick, Xo Drug's will he 
given. Those meaDs only will be employed which Nature 
can use in her Healing Work ; such as Proper Food, 
Water, Air, Light, Exercise, Cheerfulness, Rest, and Sleep. 

GRAINS, VEGETABLES AND FRUITS, 

constitute the staple articles of diet. 

This Institution is- admirably located on a site of over seven 
acres, in the highest part of the pleasant and enterprising city 
of Battle Creek, commanding a fine prospect, and affording 
ample opportunities for entertainment, quiet, and retirement. 

With a competent corps of Physicians and Helpers, this 
Institution offers to the sick all the inducements to Come and 
be Cured that are presented by any ether. 

Battle Creek is an important station on the Michigan 
Central and Peninsular Railroads, and is easy of access 
from all parts of the country. 

ALL TRAINS STOP AT BATTLE CREEK. 

^°For Particulars see Circular, sent free on application. 
Address HEALTH INSTITUTE, T.nitle CreoU* Mich 



Kedzie's Water Filter. 




The Kedzie Improved Water Filter is one of 
the greatest and most useful inventions of the age. 

After years of labor and study, 
a Water Filter has been con- 
structed so perfect in internal 
arrangements that every family 
or person having them in use 
are assured of pure, healthy water 
at all times ; also know to a cer- 
tainty that they are taking into 
the stomach no sort or kind of 
larvae or spawn of worms, — or 
insects, or strange, loathsome an- 
imalculae, — or impure floating 
matter that often lays the foun- 
dation of disease. This improved Reliable Water Filter 
readily removes all this ; also, all gases, taste, colcfr, or 
smell, from the water — consequently it must be pure, 
drinkable, and healthy. 

Thousands use them ; thousands praise them ; thou- 
sands certify to their reliability and superior qualities 
over all others for perfectly purifying rain or river water, 
rendering it drinkable and healthy. The manufacturers 
are practical and scientific men, and understand perfectly 
the action of carbons, which enables them to produce 
the desired result. 

This Kedzie Improved Water Filter is being sold 
throughout the United States and Canadas, and those 
who now have them in use certify to their utility, as a 
perfect purifier of water, and say to the manufacturers, 
" Make your Reliable Improved Filter generally known, 
for it works like a charm." 

Manufactured byR.A.BUNNEL, Rochester, N. Y. 

We furnish to order, Kedzie's Water Filters, at the fol- 
lowing prices: No. 1, $9.00; No. 2, $10.50; No. 3, $12.00 ; 
No. 4, $13.50; No. 5, $15.00. Freight will be added. 

Address HEALTH REFORMER, Battle Creek, Mich 



3DIR.. TBALL'8 

HTGEIAN HOME, 

Florence Hights, X. J. 

This Model Health Institution is beautifully situated 
on the Delaware River between Trenton and Philadelphia, 
Its rooms are large and pleasant, its groves and walks ample 
and delightful, and its water from Living" Spring's is Soft 
and Fnre, For circulars address, 

R. T. TRALL, Iff. D. 



Hygeio-Therapeutic College. 

The regular lecture terms commence about the Middle o? 
November and continue twenty weeks. Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen Admitted on Equal Terms. For further informa- 
tion and catalogues address, 

R. T. TRALL, M. D. 



PHILADELPHIA 

No. 1516 Chestnut St. 

R. T. TRALL, M. D, 5 

MRS. E. S. CHOATE, M. D., 

.1X0. E. WILLIAMS, M. D., 







THE 


HEALTH AJSV DISEASES 




OP 




K. 




WOMAN. 




BY 


-B- 


T. TBALL 7 ZMI- ID. 


Author of the " Hydropathic Encyclopedia ;" " Hygienic Hand Book ;" 

"Uterine Diseases and Displacements;" "The True Healing 

Art;" "True Temperance Platform; "Hygienic 

System;" "Tobacco Using;" &c, Ac. 




■ >•• 



PUBLISHED AT 

THE OFFICE OF THE HEALTH REFORMER: 

BATTLE CREEK, MICH 

1873. 




THE HEALTH KEEORMER. 



-A-nsr j^^jp^ij^Xj to this gj^js-jdtid ^tjbxjIc. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : Permit us to invite your atten- 
tion to the Health Reformer, a monthly journal, devoted to 
the exposition of the laws of our being, and the application 
of those laws in the preservation of health and the treat- 
ment of disease. 

The world is full of men and women who need reforming 
in their habits of life. And the present time, in some re- 
spects, is favorable to this work. As great changes in med- 
ical practice take place, the people lose confidence in drugs, 
and many of our public journals, which are circulating 
everywhere, speak of proper diet, bathing, exercise, and air, 
as the real reliances for health. Thus the superstitious con- 
fidence of people in doctors' doses is being shaken ; the ice 
is broken, and the way prepared to spread abroad the true 
philosophy of life, health, and happiness. 

The Reformer will avoid extreme positions, and will labor 
to disarm the people of their prejudice, and, in the spirit of 
love and good-will, appeal to them, and entreat them to turn 
from wrong habits of life, and live ; and at the same time it 
will stand in independent defense of the broad principles of 
hygiene, and gather as many as possible upon this glorious 
platform. 

And while the conductors of the Reformer may speak of 
God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and the Christian 
religion, in terms of reverence, they will studiously avoid 
giving this journal the least denominational cast. We more 
than welcome men and women of all religious denominations, 
and those who are not connected with any of the religious 
bodies, to all the benefits and blessings derived from cor- 
rect habits of life. 

Our journal will contain, each month, thirty-two pages of 

reading matter, from able and earnest pens, devoted to real, 

practical life, to physical, moral, and mental improvement. 

We design that each number shall contain articles upon Bi- 

(See third page of cover.) 



HEALTH REFORMER — CONTINUED. 

ble Hygiene. We take up the subject from the Sacred Rec- 
ord of the creation of man in Genesis, his employment, his 
surroundings in Eden, and the food given him of God, and 
trace the matter in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. 

With a large portion of the people, the Bible is the high- 
est and safest authority in all matters of truth and duty. 
Prove to Christian men and women, who fear God and trem- 
ble at his word, that existing reformatory movements are in 
strict harmony with the teachings of the sacred Scriptures, 
and they will no longer regard the subject as unworthy of 
their notice. But the very general impression that the re- 
strictions pf the hygienic practice are not sustained by the 
word of God, has placed many sincere Christians where it 
is difficult to reach them. 

And it is a painful fact that the vain philosophy, driveling 
skepticism, and the extremes of some who have been con- 
nected with the health-reform movement, have done much to 
prejudice sincere persons against the true philosophy of 
health. But those who revere God and his holy word can be 
reached with the plain declarations of the Scriptures of the 
Old and the New Testament. We promise to make it ap- 
pear that the Bible does not justify Christians in many of 
the common and fashionable habits of our time, which sus- 
tain a close relation to life and health, but that it does de- 
mand of them changes from these wrong habits. If we suc- 
ceed in doing this, it will be considered, by all Bible 
Christians, that it is highly proper that the attention of the 
Christian public should be called to the subject of Bible 
Hygiene, and that we may expect, so far as our journal is 
concerned, to receive liberal patronage from those who bear 
the Christian name. 

Ladies and gentlemen, you need our journal, and we need 
your patronage. Please subscribe for it. It will cost you 
only the small sum of one dollar a year. 

Address Health Reformer, Battle Creek, Mich. 



OTK BOOK LIST. 



System. By E. T. Trail, M. D. Recently 
published at the Office of the Health Refokkes. I 
just the work for the time, mud should be read hj the mill- 



T^Healfli ami Dfeeasts of Wtau. By E. T. Trail, M. D. 
A work of great ralne. Price, post-paid, 20 cents. 



A r-h:l:i-:rli::3.1 ri: :=::::- :: :Lr Efe::; 
of Tobacco on the Human System. By B I Trail, M. D. 

Price, post-paid, 20 cents. 




Cook Bank* and Kitchen Guide: comprising recipes for 
the preparation of hygienic food, directions for canning 
fruit, &e., together witn^adrice reU change of I 

Price, post-paid, 20 cents. 

TralL Price, post-paid | I 

TralL Price, post-paid, 30 

Trail. Price, post- 

Ijfew By Sylvester Graham, M. D. 
$3L0a 

Containing three of the most important 
of Graham's twenty-fire Lectures on the Science of Human 
Life — eighth, the Organs and their Uses lirteentc 

?iT=;:i". >"i: — e i:: : :e ST::v:-r :: E s 7r-:: :': :-::::. 
the Dietetic Character of Man. Price, post-paid, 35 cts. 

Mjiiopilhii Family Phvsfcian. By Joel Shew, M. D. 

Price, post-paid, $3.50. 

Domestic Practkf . Johnson. Price, post-paid, $1 . " 
Band Btek of Health — Physiology and Hygiene. Pub- 
lished by the Health Reform Institute, Battle Creek, Mich. 
Price, post-paid, 75 cents; paper cover, 40 cents. 

Care in Chrtnic Diseases. By J. M. Gaily, M. D. 

£:.:■: 

Dr. Work. Price, post-paid, 30 cts. 

bj mail, in packages of not less than 2 
at the rate of 800 pages for $1.00. 
Health Etfatnmr, Bmitie Creek, Mich. 




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